Thursday, October 17, 2013

Fanfiction

Lets talk about fanfiction, all right?

So I was having a discussion with a friend and fellow artist about how she created an account on Archive of Our Own, but wanted a username that didn’t sound like her…but that she still liked. She wanted this because she didn’t want the honorable peoples of the internets to connect her artist persona with her fanfiction.
Now, when I made this blog, I wanted a few things. I wanted tabs at the top of the page. And I wanted one of them to lead to my fanfiction. The reason? Cause I put a lot of effort into my fanfiction, that’s why! I write fanfiction, I read a shit-ton of fanfiction (see previous post), and I generally talk a lot about fanfiction. And while I am currently working under a pen name in order to keep some of my identity private, fanfiction is just another part of my writing, so why not connect it with my writing persona?
I can understand the argument of writing fanfiction isn’t a really productive activity. The time I spend reading, researching, and writing fanfiction could probably be better spent writing original stuff for publishers so I can get money instead of kudos. But you know what I like about fanfiction? It’s relaxing. If I really want to, I don’t have to impress anyone. And when I put in the effort, people appreciate it. While with original stuff, I’ve got people who expect more, demand more, and will reject me if I don’t deliver. Which is gratifying in itself, but its the difference between running a race and going for a jog.
Besides, in terms of guilty pleasure, how far away is fanfiction from…say…erotic romance?

Also, I have the belief that all upcoming writers are basically going to be born and bred on fanfiction.net/AO3/Tumblr/Livejournal/ksarchive/potionsandsnitches/fictionalley/and you now know where most of my day is spent.

Window Hoarding

Here are my projects of the moment

Major revisions for Crimson Romance, including expanding my short story His Hawaiian Christmas from around 10,000 words to over 12,000. Which doesn’t include deleting, reordering, and generally polishing.
Trying to finish my submission for Less Than Three Press, Won’t Back Down Anthology. I have a little over 6,000 words and it will probably be 15,000+ by the 30th.
Prepping for NaNoWriMo.
Beginning communications with Bottom Drawer Press.
Generally exploding.

So I’m going to cool off by telling you just how many windows are open on my computer.
This idea is brought to you by Me Trying to Get to My Desktop So I Could Find Some File There But Then Found a Million Windows Open and It Took Ten Minutes.
They are as follows:

Six Scrivener projects open:
1. My personal journal.
2. My Harry Potter fanfiction. Including the mastercopy of Unsaid, Still Life, and the notes and incomplete first draft of Resilience, the sequel to Still Life.
3. Less Than Three. Which means everything I’ve written for Less Than Three, my notes, some open submission prompts, and my current gladiator project.
4. This blog.
5. Crimson Romance. Same idea as any other of my publisher scrivener projects. See number 3.
6. NaNo2013. Besides for my notes and ideas, it also includes the prompts from Entangled Publishing, both their imprints Brazen and Covet.

11 Chrome windows
Ten of them are Star Trek fanfiction. Though one is website of Star Trek podcasts. Which is basically just fanfiction in the end.
One is my gmail (which is always open to one of my three addresses)

Two MicrosoftWord files
1. His Hawaiian Christmas, full of my editors comments and my current revisions.
2. Freshman Fever, my accepted submission to Bottom Drawer Press. Since the editing process hasn’t started yet, I am re-familiarizing myself with the story.

Itunes
Playlist - Inspirational Easy Listening. Which is mostly just Jim Brickman, Yann Tiersen, Miyasaki soundtracks. Pixar Sountracks. And generally calming noise.

Skype
In which my brother is the only one online because he is a slacker at work.

Downloaded file of a Star Trek Podcast reading of You’ll Get There in the End (It Just Takes A While) by Seperis.

AND THEN
You get to my background of Spock stroking a kitty (see image 1)



This be my life.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Cover Art

A bit of a ramble

Do you want to know why I decided to submit to Dreamspinner Press?

Its because of their cover art is pure awefulawesomeness

Here are some lovely examples
Bully for You by Catt Ford eBook

Nathaniel by Jan Irving eBook

The Weekender by R.W. Clinger eBook

The Caveman and the Devil by Chris T. Kat eBook


And that isn’t even counting the amazing that is the Advent Calendar series covers

Please, have a look, you won’t regret it!

Actually, I first submitted a steampunk romance to them for an anthology, but it was unfortunately rejected. But that had a pretty awesome cover. I might still buy it, if only to have a book with a cover of a half-naked man with goggles and…gears.

So, do I have point? Yes, my editor has just sent me the proof for my own Advent Calendar short story, From This Window, which and I was pretty excited to see what awefulawesomness cover I could get! Was the anatomy going to be just slightly wonky? What kind of awkward panty shot could they find this time?! Would their heads be a little too large and seem disconnected from their bodies?!
And its…actually kind of nice looking. I mean, there are still half-dressed buff men flirting on the cover, but its still rather tasteful. I’ll post it once Dreamspinner starts advertising it and I’ll have a link to also give you. The publication date is December 1st, along with the rest of the Christmas-themed stories. They will be available as a set or for individual sale.


I never promised this blog was going to be completely serious.

Monday, October 7, 2013

10/7/2013

What am I working on right now?

Well according to my Summer Schedule, which is now a permanent window on my taskbar, the next anthology I’m hitting up is the Less Than Three anthology Won’t Back Down. In short, a LGBT about people who fight…basically.
More information! (as well as other open calls from LT3)
Won't Back Down

Aaaaaaand what am I doing? Gladiators, of course. This is what happens when you take Latin classes for six years and feel the inexplicable need to make it somehow ‘worth it’. I’ve also discovered that all the normal tropes of highlander/viking/military romances are very applicable to gladiators. Why do we not have more gladiator romances out there? I guess because you can’t have a gladiator with any sort of political power. The good ones were rock stars, yes, but slave rock stars. Though I have to say, making a gladiator that used to be a Gallic warrior is pretty darn close to any of the highlander novels currently shaming my bookshelf. In fact, you could just crossover any highlander/viking novel with gladiators. Why? Cause the Romans were conquering bitches.


Anyway, I am about 6,000 words in and I’ve realized that I really have to stop naming my characters with names that end in ‘s’. Makes the possessive a perpetual battle. Personally, I’m into the s’, like Aurelius’ tunic. Instead of s’s, like Aurelius’s tunic. But that is really just an aesthetic thing, as both are grammatically correct. Just the second is used more often. For anyone that is into Latin, you know how basically every male name ends in ‘us’. If you ever see it different (I’m looking at you, Cicero), its usually just another declension of the name. The ‘us’ usually signified that its nominative, subject, and I’m just going to stop now. In any case, all my guys (which, there are a lot) all have the same possessive problems. And my life is just slightly more annoying. #firstworldauthorproblems

Preparing for November



If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is go here
NOW

Okay, so October is the month of Much Planning for NaNo and I’m determined this year to actually get this done since last year I kind of fizzled out. Been brainstorming since September for this and I’ve come up with a few ideas.
1 - Write one of my novel ideas that I’ve been knocking around for years (aka, young adult fantasy)
2 - Write a fanfic (don’t you judge me!)
3 - Write for the Entangled Publishing imprint Brazen.
brazenbanner-gold


Whose open call page is currently advertising: Have you always wanted to write for Brazen? Need an idea for NaNoWriMo this year? Brazen is currently looking for books that feature the following tropes, settings, and/or characters.

They are a special snowflake and deserve the novel I projectile vomit in 30 days. But seriously, I really like this idea. For one, not many romance publishers like the short 50k novel. They all prefer 80k to 100k. And two, why not? Not only will I be NaNo-ing for shits and giggles, I might actually get a contract out of it. And if I don’t…well, was going to NaNo anyway. Plus, they have a nice selection of prompts. I’ve never submitted to Entangled, but I’ve been following their open submission page for awhile now, since they are open to new authors.


Also, their imprint Covet is also looking for 50k to 70k novels

Saturday, October 5, 2013

A little about my journey this year

Whenever I try something new, I try to start as small as possible. So the first places I started looking up was publishers of poetry. Some of these published chapbooks, some published directly online, some I was just looking at for their contests. I used Writer’s Digest and other writing websites to help me search, as well as good-ol’-google. I actually have yet to submit any of my poetry, mostly because I haven’t written enough to fill and chapbook and most of the places are pretty intimidating, at least to a newbie like me.
The second place I went to was a small publisher that I was actually familiar with; Less Than Three Press. I actually followed Megan Derr (one of the founders, I believe) when she used to post to fictionpress.com. And now, I actually own about four of her books. Since I knew Less Than Three Press was a small company and I was familiar with the style of their premier author, I felt comfortable browsing their open submission page to see what I could give them.
I landed on their Fairy Tales Serial, which I own two volumes of. I decided that I would write something to submit. This was in January and it took me all the way through March to write a 20,000 word short story. This was mostly because I was desperately out of writing-shape. While I had been writing off and on a novel-length Harry Potter fanfic, I hadn’t written a short story since I was in school. But I found, after I was done editing it and ready to send it, I had enough juice left to write another 20,000 word short story for the same serial. That one only took me two weeks.
And Less Than Three accepted both of them, which was awfully encouraging to a budding author. For those of you looking for them on LT3, the first is titled The Blind City. It is currently running its serial on the website. It will be featured in Fairytales Slashed Volume 5, released as an ebook November 6th. Which you should have a look at, if only because the cover is reeeeeeally pretty. Then second is True Love, which will be running as a serial beginning December 4-January 15. You can see my links to them in my Publications link.

So, I had written my first query letter, which is really just a letter to the publisher/editor begging for them to publish what you wrote. I’ve found that for most publishers who accept unsolicited manuscripts (aka, you don’t have an agent submitting for you), they usually give a guideline for what they would like you to write in the email somewhere on their website. For submitting a short story, its a little simpler than a novel, but here is how I view a basic query:
Salutations
Brief Intro (name, penname, title of work, what is it for, word count)
Summary of Work
Writing Resume (where I’ve been published before, etc. If I haven’t, got creative with phrases like ‘this is my first submission to __press.’
Contact Info
DONE
But I usually read the publishers website closely if they wanted more from me, how I needed to format my short story for them, how to write the subject of my email, etc. And most of them got back to me within two weeks to say they received my submission. Then it was 4-6 weeks before they said whether they accepted it or not.

So, after my small success with Less Than Three, I found myself looking for more small romance publishers to submit to. While, I’ve been reading the romance genre for years now, I’ve never written in it before. I’ve always been more of a fantasy/young adult author. And though I looked around for Fantasy/scifi publishers, I just couldn’t find the sheer numbers that I could with romance. Especially since I am exclusively writing short stories for anthologies.
I got the idea from Less Than Three. Since I hadn’t really written romance before, I don’t have a stock pile of short stories to shell out, so why not just write whatever the publisher is looking for? I figured it would get me more success since I could cater to publisher’s needs, even if I wasn’t totally familiar with them.
So, by the end of March, I had created a summer to-do list (which is a lie, since it goes until the end of December) I tried to find a short story for every month, if not two short stories. I found more small publishers by searching through author pages and I wrote down the anthologies, their requirements, and dates they were due. Now, this summer do-to list has changed a lot since March, as I continue to find more publishers, loose interest in some anthologies, or just can’t make the deadlines. My overall goal was to submit 10 short stories by the end of the year. As of right now, in October, I have submitted 8 (though one I submitted twice since it was rejected by one publisher and I found another that it met the requirements for)
Out of the 8, four have been accepted and published. One was rejected. Two are in limbo, waiting for a reply. One was actually a speculative fiction that I wrote in college and found a publisher for, but it was also rejected.
Besides for Less Than Three, I will be published by Dreamspinner Press in their Advent Calendar anthology (TBA), and my most recent is from Crimson Romance in their Bells Will Be Ringing anthology (TBA). I have put links to my author page from these publishers, and the anthologies, when they are released.
I am still getting used to the editing process and keeping up with my email communication with my editors. I haven’t run into any problems with simultaneous submissions (submitting one work to multiple publishers) since I write the short story exclusively for the publisher’s open calls. If they reject it, it is probably unlikely that I’ll find another outlet for it.
For the rest of the year, I’ve only a couple more short stories on my agenda, though I certainly keep looking around for new anthologies and updates.

In this effort, I’ve discovered some things about myself. For one, I can now reliably write a short story in two weeks, maybe less if I really like it. For Holiday Anthologies, it really is Christmas in July. I’m incredibly tired of writing contemporary romance. And I’m rather tired of writing short stories, ha! I can make it through the end of the year, but I certainly couldn’t live off of short stories alone. I’m a novelist at heart, and there is nothing more satisfactory than spending months, or years, on one story, with one set of characters, and one plot-line, for me.

I’ve already created a to-do list for next year. It includes working more closely on my novels already written, writing new ones, and possibly a short story here or there. It will be a little less gratifying since I will probably only submit once or twice next year, instead of nearly ten times. But I think my writing demons will be more appeased. And this blog will turn into more of my daily writing life instead of me floundering through publishers and editing processes.

Friday, October 4, 2013

A smaller Introduction

A little over a year ago, I graduated from college with a degree in creative writing. It took me until this January for me to decide it was time for me to try and do something with my degree and my passion for writing. But while college gave me excellent workshops and helped hone my writing abilities, they really don’t teach you stuff that you need to know about getting published. Like, what is a query letter, a simultaneous submission, and unsolicited manuscripts? What should I look for in a publisher? What kind of publishers are there? How do I recognize one that will fit for me? What kind of stuff should I try to get published first? Do I need an agent? Do I need an agent now? And a whole lot more.
What I’m going to try to describe in this blog and continuing for as long as it takes me to feel like a ‘professional author’ is how I have approached trying to get published, whether successful or not. This is not going to be a ‘how to’ guide. More like a journal of what I’m trying and my conclusions on my methods.

For anyone reading this who is a published author or attempting to become one, I would love to hear from you! Especially if your experience is different from mine, if you have any advice, or any questions!